Credit: BBC News reporting
New York prosecutors are reopening a criminal investigation into allegations that a woman was raped at a Cornell University fraternity house in 2024, after new allegations emerged in a civil lawsuit filed against the university.
The case centers on an alleged incident on 19 October 2024 involving members of Cornell’s Chi Phi fraternity. The woman, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, alleges that she was intoxicated, drugged with ketamine and sexually assaulted by seven men. She maintains that she was unable to consent.
Jane Doe reported the incident to Cornell University Police on 8 November 2024. At the time, however, the Tompkins County District Attorney’s Office concluded that the available evidence did not meet the legal threshold for criminal charges.
District Attorney Matthew Van Houten said Monday that prosecutors have since decided to revisit the case and present the evidence to a grand jury. He said his office would determine whether criminal charges are appropriate and emphasized that the case would be handled impartially.
A major point of dispute is the difference between Jane Doe’s original statement to police and the allegations contained in her recent lawsuit.
According to Van Houten, her 2024 statement described her participation in drug use and sexual activity as voluntary and consensual and did not allege that she had been drugged against her will or gang raped. He said his office had not previously been contacted by her lawyers to indicate that the original account was inaccurate or to request that prosecutors reconsider their decision.
Van Houten nevertheless acknowledged that victims of sexual assault may need considerable time to process traumatic experiences and understand what happened to them.
Jane Doe’s attorney, Thomas Giuffra, disputed the implication that the differences between the accounts undermine her allegations. In a statement obtained by CBS, he said his client was traumatized after the incident and was initially unable to fully process what had occurred.
Giuffra also questioned how the original investigation was handled, arguing that law enforcement should have conducted additional interviews, gathered evidence and developed the case further.
The civil lawsuit also points to an alleged Snapchat group conversation in which a fraternity member made vulgar comments about the possibility of having sex with Jane Doe. Van Houten described the messages as crude but said they did not, by themselves, establish whether she consented to sexual activity.
Cornell University has said it supports the criminal case being considered by a grand jury. The university has also rejected allegations that it failed to impose significant disciplinary consequences on students involved.
In her lawsuit, Jane Doe alleges that Cornell failed to adequately protect her and allowed the men involved to mitigate their disciplinary consequences by submitting essays. She is seeking damages for what the lawsuit describes as severe emotional, psychological and physical harm.
The civil case is separate from the criminal investigation. An initial hearing in the lawsuit is scheduled for 23 October in Manhattan.
The reopened investigation will now give prosecutors an opportunity to present the available evidence to a grand jury and determine whether it supports criminal charges.
Credit: BBC News
